Introducing the Qld Treasurer

New governments are always the last to realise that the only thing new about governance and public policy happens to be them. The test of any new government is how long it takes for that realisation to occur.

In Queensland, we’ve just completed the first 100 days of the Newman Government, otherwise known as Campbell Newman’s 100 day magical mystery tour – a sort of prolonged orientation week for new front benchers as they attend lots of events, go to a lot of meetings and where the public service tries their best to make them realise that they’re actually running the show now, and that it’s time for them to get their shit together.

A few of Ministers have surprised people – adapting to the realities of government much quicker than many thought they would. Some have taken to it like naturals.

Others however, too many in fact, haven’t quite figured it all out yet – others still, don’t seem to be able to bring themselves to even start acting like grownups.

Let me introduce you to Tim Nicholls – Tim doesn’t realise that he’s actually the Queensland Treasurer. He knows he is something Treasurerish, with his better office, people actually answering his calls, journalists actually attending his press conferences. He gets to attend swankier events and has a substantially larger hospitality budget – but he still doesn’t realise that he’s actually the Treasurer.

You can tell, as he still behaves as if he were in opposition – a place in Qld where it has historically been considered acceptable practice to just make things up as required. The transition from ad hoc political sloganeer to serious political institution isn’t going well for Mr Nicholls.

The alleged Treasurer recently wrote an article for the Brisbane Times – it’s well worth pulling it apart to highlight the lazy nonsense that’s starting to pervade what should be the serious side of Qld politics.

It begins:

Temporary contract workers in the public service were “cruelly strung along” by the former government, argues Treasurer Tim Nicholls.

The Newman government’s position on the size of the public sector is quite clear – our overriding principle is to preserve as many jobs as possible.

This government has both a responsibility and a mandate to pay down Labor’s debt.

It is a responsibility we all share.

And it is with that thought in mind that I ask members of the public sector to carefully consider demands for higher wages.

Let us then carefully consider these demands – but more importantly, a big bunch of public policy issues that accompany them – for at least then, there will be exactly one of us that has decided to do so.

It’s a question of high wage growth versus job cuts.

By turning down wage offers that are more than fair, union members will be jeopardising not only their colleagues’ jobs but also the state’s future prosperity.

The “wage offers” the alleged Treasurer is talking about are actually based on Tim Nicholls and Campbell Newman making an assumption that average annual inflation across the next three years – the life of the coming agreement – will be 1.6%.

No – that’s not a typo.

Not for this dynamic duo, that awkward reality where the Reserve Bank of Australia runs an inflation targeting regime designed to keep inflation between a 2% and 3% band over the medium and long term. To put this piece of ridiculous economic piffle into some context, let’s look at the most recent RBA Statement on Monetary Policy and the median inflation expectations contained within it (pages 64 and 67)

They have inflation forecasts 60 to 90 basis points lower than everyone else! If Nicholls wants to give real wage cuts, he should simply be honest about it. But as we’ll see, honesty isn’t often the best policy for the alleged Treasurer.

The Queensland government coffers are empty. State debt is heading for $100 billion. Unions can thank their Labor ‘mates’ for that.

Eleventy bazillion in fact – but that’s another laugh for another time. The only thing more consistent about new governments than rampaging egos are the discovery of magical budget black holes.

So when unions demand more money for their members it stands to reason expenses must be reduced elsewhere.

Rationalising the public service is not a task we relish. Nor do we embark on it lightly or frivolously.

There are many hardworking and dedicated public servants who have been let down by a Labor government that made short-term decisions for their own political benefit.

The Commission of Audit Interim Report found that in the past decade the size of the Queensland public service was allowed to grow by an unsustainable 41 per cent. It has become too top-heavy. Had the public service grown at the same rate as population, we’d have 18,500 fewer public servants, and expenses would be $1.5 billion lower.

It’s one of those “if my aunty had a willy, she’d be my uncle” things.

Let’s have a look at these figures – they’re quite enlightening and expose a pretty poor understanding of Qld public policy history. All figures are available from the Qld Public Service Commission’s annual reports from 2001 to 2011. For 2012 numbers, I’m using the 2012 March Quarter update on the same site.

To start with, here’s Qld public service numbers by the key departments – Health, Police, Education and Communities (which is where child safety and disability services reside) since 2001. (click to expand all these charts)

Now, let’s combine those together and call it HPEC and chart it with “the rest of the public service” which we’ll call “Other”.

That’s the entire Qld public service in that above chart.

Now, let’s look at that last chart, but where HPEC and “Others” (the rest of the public service) are done as proportions of the Qld population.

Now the story starts to be painted. The raw growth in the Qld public sector total numbers came from Health, Education, Communities and Police. The relative growth came from Health, Police and Communities – which we can see here:

While the total public service grew by 38% compared to population growth of 25%, Health, Police and Communities were where the actual growth came from – while Education and the rest of the public service grew at a slower rate than population growth. Education and the rest of public service became more efficient over that time – much more efficient, with education delivering an additional year of schooling, and the rest of the public service implementing the largest legislative and policy agenda that Qld had seen over any decade period

The reason health grew is simple – it was a response to the Qld Health crisis, which you may remember from such classic hits as Dr Death and Bundaberg Hospital. What happened for those uninitiated in the ways and means of Qld’s institutional killing and maiming, the health and hospital system was understaffed and so poorly organised to the point where basic accountability and transparency systems ceased to function, or in many cases, ceased to effectively exist at all. It wasn’t just Bundaberg hospital either – Bundaberg just happened to be the canary in the coalmine. The problems found at Bundaberg were also found across the entire Qld hospital system, but mostly to a lesser degree of magnitude… lesser but growing.

We were on the verge of having a whole lot of Bundaberg hospitals – so the Health Action Plan was created, which attempted to deal with the situation. As a result of more doctors, nurses and health professionals being brought into the system (and the construction of a much more accountable system along with it), the proportion of front line workers in Health jumped from around the 81% mark in 2001 to 86% today. Similarly, over that period, the case load of hospitals has also increased significantly.

With Police growth – that’s pretty self explanatory.

Communities on the other hand has been largely driven by child safety and child protection issues rising from what was the appalling state of Qld’s capabilities in those regards. So much so, that Newman himself has just initiated a major inquiry into the child protection system. The irony being that it will recommend more staff.

So that’s why, policy wise, we witnessed the growth we did in the Qld public service – ostensibly to deal with a health and child protection crisis, and adding more police.

When Tim Nicholls says: “Had the public service grown at the same rate as population, we’d have 18,500 fewer public servants, and expenses would be $1.5 billion lower.”

Let’s look at what that would mean:

I’m using more updated numbers than Nicholls – March quarter 2012 figures. What we see is that if the public service grew at the same rate as the Qld population, we’d have 17,725 fewer people in Health, 3,594 fewer in Communities and 1,002 less in Police. Ironically, we’d also have 1,346 more people in Education and 418 more in the rest of the public service – but let’s not go there. 86% of the increase over and above population growth came directly from Health.

To give an idea of what’s involved here with the alleged Treasurer’s ideal public service numbers – i.e. a position he’s plucked straight from his posterior with little to no thought at all - if we look at the health action plan and it’s follow through (small pdf file), it made the number of front line health workers 85.8% as of June last year (a simple calculation from that link – 58,280 of the 69,221 health employees were front line)

Even if we assume it’s down to 85% (when there’s absolutely no reason to, just being generous to Tim as he appears to need all the generosity he can get), that means there’s only 10,300 odd non-frontline health staff, and he reckons there’s 17,725 too many.

According to the alleged Treasurer, he’s going to need to cut all non-front line staff (don’t ask who handles Hospital logistics) and still needs to cut over 7,000 front line staff on top, just to get back to his fantasy ideal of the public service in Health alone.

Back to the days of Bundaberg – on steroids – and more killing and maiming. The problem the alleged Treasurer faces is that his public service numbers don’t stack up to anyone that knows anything about Qld public policy, or how we got to where we are.

Tim Nicholls continues:

Almost half the state’s revenue this financial year will be spent paying public servants’ wages and superannuation.

A fascinating statistic – although one that loses a bit of its clout if you mention that this actually happens every year. State governments supply public services, public services provided by actual people called public servants – you don’t get one without the other. It can be a tough concept to get your noggin around.

If we track employee expenses and revenue from the General Government Sector Operating Statement of budgets going back to 2003/04, we get a pretty unexciting chart.

Weekly earnings of Queensland public sector workers have increased by 16.7 per cent in the past decade, compared to 12.7 nationally.

If wages have increased by 16.7% in a decade, that would be very bad news indeed – since inflation over the period from 2001 to 2011 was actually 33.1% (Try it yourself with the RBA inflation calculator). No wonder Tim is offering real wage cuts as wage offers, if he reckons a 16% real wage cut over a decade was absolutely fantastic stuff.

If you’re confused about now, the alleged Treasurer probably meant “real wage” rises – although who really knows. If we ever get to the point where analysing what Tim Nicholls “actually means” becomes a necessity on any given economic topic, it’s probably safe to say that we’ve already lost.

The period the alleged Treasurer is concerned with here spans the 2000/2001 through to 2010/11 financial years. The first release of ABS 6302.2 after July 1st of each year comes in August, so that’s the data we’ll use here.

As you can see – the Qld public sector average weekly earnings (Full time, adult, ordinary time earnings) grew 57.7% over the period compared to 54.3% growth for the national public sector average. But what you can also see is that Qld public sector wages grew from being 95.3% of the national public sector average in August 2001, to be 97.4% of the public sector national average in August 2011.

Similarly, Qld private sector wages grew 70.4% over the period, compared to 60.4% nationally – and changed from being 91.9% of the average national private sector wage in 2001 to being 97.6% in 2011

In other words, Qld public sector wages grew faster than the national public sector average, but grew slower than Qld and Australian private sector wages and are still less than the national public sector average.

The reason for this is pretty clear – Qld was a low skill, low wage economy for most of its existence and has only recently started to catch up to the rest of Australia. The private sector in Qld was particularly lower skilled in terms of education and training compared to the broader Australian private sector, and as the skill level of the Qld labour market increased, and as the economy itself increased in sophistication and value production, we witnessed substantially higher private sector wage increases than the national average. Effectively the skill/wage gap closed between Qld and the rest of the economy as Qld became better educated and developed more sophisticated vocational skill sets to match a much more sophisticated economy. You can also add to that the resources boom, which added higher value production to the Qld private sector economy.

The public sector in Qld, however, already had a higher level of education and training compared to the Qld private sector, and the skills/wage gap between the Qld and National public sectors was much smaller to begin with.

Getting back to the remarks from the alleged Treasurer – it is true that Qld public sector wages grew faster than the national public sector average. They grew from being 95.3% of the national average in 2001 to being 97.4% of the national average in 2011 - reflecting a state wide pattern of higher than national wages growth as we closed the gap between us and the rest of Australia. But while we closed the gap, we are still below the national average.

While wage increases for public servants have been markedly higher than inflation in recent years, many small business owners and private sector employees have struggled to make ends meet. They have been forced to pay rising taxes, fees and charges, without receiving any increase in their take home pay.

Ahem

We’ll do real wages in a bit.

Many private companies during the global financial crisis made the tough decision to freeze employee wages and recruitment. The employees at these companies may not have liked having their wages frozen, but accepted it was better than the alternative of losing their jobs. Even before the economic slowdown, real pay rises (above inflation) were only offered in exchange for productivity gains or increased responsibility.

Meanwhile, at ABS 6302.2 (where we were just at) and ABS 6401.0 (Consumer Price Index), we can combine those to give us some comparable real wage increases by sector – Tim’s “real pay rises (above inflation)”.

As we’ve already seen, Qld private sector wages over the decade grew at a much faster rate than Qld public sector wages – and everyone experienced the same inflation rate. But let’s look at the period covering the global financial crisis – from 2008 through to today. You never know, Tim may have actually got something right.

Real wage rises (wage rises adjusting for inflation) since the beginning of 2008 have averaged 2.8% per year for the Qld private sector and 1.9% per year for the Qld public sector.

While private sector real wage growth did freeze for a couple of quarters, it recovered quickly, and over the entire financial crisis has outstripped public sector wage growth.

When the private sector was hit by the GFC, they reduced output as a result of collapsing demand. As a consequence of that reduced output, they had a few quarters of wage restraint.

The output of the public service is public services – it isn’t an abstract concept – it’s health, police, fire fighters, child protection, education etc. The demand for public services didn’t collapse, isn’t collapsing, and won’t collapse over the forward estimates. Far from it, demand for Qld public services has, and is continuing to increase – in some areas increasing dramatically.

Using the alleged Treasurer’s own argument, if he wants a wage freeze because of collapsed output, as occurred in the private sector during the GFC, then what public services does he intend to reduce the output of?

Does he even know? Does he even understand the question?

During recent enterprise bargaining agreement negotiations we offered fair and reasonable pay increases to public servants who are among the best paid in Australia.

Well, yes, as long as “among the best paid” = “below the national average”.

From what we’ve seen so far, I think we can safely suggest that Tim is among the best economic minds in Australia.

Anyway – the article goes on and on. If you really want to punch yourself in the face and read the rest of it, you can continue it over here.

Unfortunately, this is indicative of the type of vacuous piffle we’re getting from the Newman government across a wide range of policy areas, where Ministers – too many Ministers – are still acting as if they’re in opposition and regularly producing all sorts of inaccurate and superficial rubbish about the big policy issues that they are now supposed to own. They aren’t getting called on it either, as the Labor opposition are one of the saddest telephone booths of people you’ll ever lay eyes on, and the media is getting hollowed out to the point where there aren’t enough hours in a journo’s day to be across the detail involved on any particular policy issue. Too many in the Newman Ministry, including the alleged Treasurer, are effectively running a Baffle Them With Bullshit strategy.

The difference between being in government and being in Opposition is that the former requires you to be at least marginally acquainted with the reality based community. Unlike Opposition, government doesn’t start and end with political hackery – there is a more important job involved, that of policy and governance.

And that requires you to at least be partially across your brief.

God help them when the inevitable policy crisis lands in their lap, where the effectiveness of its management will be defined by their actual policy capabilities and policy knowledge. From what we’re seeing so far, there’s a lot of childish pretenders hanging around.

So…..

Dear Tim Nicholls, if you want to actually be the Treasurer, then start acting like it. Shit or get off the pot.

Disclaimer: When I take off my possum suit, I work for Qld’s public sector union – which may explain why I’m across the details involved here. These views are my own - however widely they may or may not happen to be shared by others.

Quality journalism. Opinionated, but well backed up. Nothing worse than opinion journalism without facts.
Lots of frontline health services being cut now, no one calling our dear leaders on that. Private health being reduced at the same time. Perfect storm?

Health in crisis could see this Government only last one term. Two years of headlines for Mr Springborg coming up!

Excellent analysis as always Poss. As a former public servant I am also curious to ask another question. In the midst of all these cuts in rank and file numbers in the QPS, is there any mention of a parallel cut in the number of SES level executives? Half of the State’s financial problems could be traced to the actions (or inaction) of a few dozen financial managers in Qld Health and two other Departments, not overspending by those delivering services. Any sign those people (Execs) will be asked to make equal sacrifices?

It would also be interesting to compare the savings from the PS cuts with the cost of the toll road deals that Mr Newman organised.

“Unfortunately, this is indicative of the type of vacuous piffle we’re getting from the Newman government across a wide range of policy areas…”

Well, not just them. It’s a hallmark of too many politicians to just rabbit on about the woes of poor little “small businesses” having to actually pay tax and decent wages and the rest, to whinge about having to shell out for wage increases for public servants at all – basically to complain about having to pay people for what they do. It’s as old as politics itself and older.

In the case of the public service, people accept it. Everyone wants “the government” to wipe their arses for them but vote for governments that will only kick them.

The sheer amount of power that the people of Queensland have lavished upon these guys means that they can basically promise to go house to house like Herod on Christmas and still probably retain enough seats to be in power for the next decade. This isn’t even the beginning of the beginning.

Thanks Poss , being from Sunny QLD and DIDN’T vote for CanJOH team of idiots . Lucky i got solar power before this thief cut the price of solar power to 8 cents a Kw and then sells it for 22 cents ? Went on CM today, WOW lots of Rednecks and ill informed idiots and conservative staffers spreading more lies.

@ Harry Rodgers – yeah, its much worse now. And it won’t get better under this mob, unless they restore public services which everyone uses (even business people) and start better understanding the enmeshed relationships between the public and private sectors ie. small/medium, even big enterprises hang off the public service work. Happy to give you personal and highly specific examples, if you like. At least Labor woke up from its neo-liberal torpor and tried to play catch up before it got trounced at the polls.

QLD public service is still pretty uncompetitive. If you applies a common size approach to the state government operating statement’s over the last 10 years (divide the amount spent on employees by the total revenue earned by the state), you get the following average efficiencies (smaller number is better as you are spending less per $ of revenue)

A very interesting and thorough piece of analysis. It just shows how conservative politicians and business leaders exploit and promote common prejudices against public servants. The public sector provides essential services that private corporations can’t or won’t supply. The demand for these services does not diminish in difficult economic times – the opposite is more likely. And why do so many assume that the private sector is necessarily more productive? It is infested with cosy, inefficient monopolies and oligopolies. The GFC showed us how much of global finance comprises high-stakes gambling with other people’s money. Meanwhile there are speculators whose role is essentially parasitic – bidding prices up or manipulating them to the detriment of consumers (e.g. in housing), productive businesses and genuine investors. And what about the legions of corporate lawyers and accountants whose main role is to hide assets and income from the tax man. Private equals productive? Not always.

And the worst thing is that Tim Nicholls is one of the more rational LNP ministers.

Newman is currently having a hissy fit because Origin has applied an electricity price increase, despite Can-Do’s edict that there would be no increases. I always wondered how he was going to do that, and sure enough turns out he can’t. Now he urges all Queenslanders to change their supplier to punish Origin, like he intends to do with the Qld govt electricity account, BUT (today’s CM):

“Experts have warned the Government’s abrupt move to drop $27 million of Origin Energy contracts could leave the state liable to hefty exit fees and potential legal challenges. In return, the change of contracts may only provide limited, if any, electricity savings.”

Today’s tantrum/threat is to wreck the Murray Darling Water plan that has been in negotiation since the middle of Howard’s era.

Labor was in power for way too long (I think we can see why so few wanted to vote for the LNP rabble) and certainly have had their share of incompetence, but Newman has notions of government that bear no relationship with facts, actual limits to power and rationality.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I don’t suppose I could ask you to turn your considerable gifts to a review of the Great Costello’s State Audit, which has revealed how much Qld is sliding “into the abyss”? I had a brief look at it and was particularly struck by this sentence in the “Setting the Baseline” text: If the trends of the last five years are extrapolated, the projections would show the fiscal deficit worsening to $19.7 billion in 2015-16, as shown in Chart 1.2.

Doesn’t this rely on the reoccurrence of the GFC, the floods and Cyclone Yasi? Alas I am no accountant….

Today the Premier said that his first 100 days had been “fun”. Yes, it’s “fun” removing rights from people, denying equality and cutting programs that benefit Queenslanders, while feathering the nest of yourself and your mates. Pathetic. Cam Il Nu Mong, the Great Dictator of George Street. May his reign be brief and his end unpleasant.

Another nail in thne coffin that the Liberals are good managers. It’s not in their DNA. Remember that Menzies got elected after the war on a platorm of spending whilst the incumbent ALP govt maintained war time austerity measures.

The fact that Tim Nicholls is sloppy and can’t do basic maths is just following the lead of his federal counterpart.

They get away with it because the Murdoch Media does not do its job. Can you imagine the Curious Snail holding them to account?

Campbell just repeated on ABC radio the Nicholls line that “the national inflation rate is currently 1.6% (and Qld’s is 1.3%)”, and added that “politicians should not be receiving increases greater than that”. Clearly the disbursement in late May of a minimum expense bonus of $8k (for attending a committee) to all his LNP MPs has momentarily slipped his mind.

I cede to no one in my scepticism and criticisms of Campbell Newman, or at least his political actions, gained from rational analysis over about 7 years (since he became mayor of my town Brisbane).
But I think, while individual actions and policies can be criticized, I suppose we really need to allow a year at least before economic repercussions can be laid directly at his feet.
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Of course sometimes economic good times have nothing to do with the incumbent (12 years of Howard), or they can seem like good times because the government fails to reform or invest in infrastructure which takes time for its impact to catch up or become obvious (20+ years of Menzies et al; 12 years of Howard, 21 years of Bjelke-Peterson, 7 years of Mayor Newmann).

In fact this is my theory of our political history: long periods of conservative rule (and mostly inaction) followed by short intense periods of Labor reform and attempt to catch up on infrastructure which of course induces feelings of insecurity in the timid “lucky country” (30 months of Whitlam; the early Hawke-Keating period; the current Gillard period). This strategy often works because do-nothing governments avoid doing anything that unsettles the voters, even stooping to exploit their worst tendencies; and clearly the status of the nation (or state) concerns them only peripherally. I think two current politicians, Newman and Abbott, fall outside of usual leaders in that either they were too dumb to realize where their adopted policy leads (Newman) or they care even less for real outcomes to the nation or state (eg. compared to those who simply didn’t know what they really wanted to do when they got power: Fraser, Howard except Work Choices which was his hearts desire, BOF, Baillieu).
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And that is why both will be disasters, and probably in the short term since neither has the temperment to plan anything carefully, to attend to detail, to listen to wiser heads or to wait for more measured policies to work.

you cant take two completely disparate sets of statictics and merge them to form a logical conclusion.

% cost as part of overall government spending – sure, I can see that as showing the trend to more or less spending on the public service in real terms.

% cost as part of revenue – nope that loses me if the aim is to show the efficiency of the public service. as robert pointed out – move one function out of the public service and into private enterprise – that doesnt make the public service more “efficient”.

on the other side of the ledger. tax the begeesus out of the state and increase revenue – again that doesnt make the public service more efficient.

Further interesting developments on this theme with Newman annoncing the elimination of 2000 jobs in the Transport and Main Roads departments (out of 8000). I am curious to see what he will do if there is another flood this year; perhaps the roads will repair themselves? Are there really 2000 bureaucrats in TMR? I doubt it. This level of cut can only mean privatisation of some service delivery, unless Newman is confident Brisbane is about to start shrinking and North Queensland will never have another wet season.

This comment in the ABC article is also ironic in several ways:

Mr Newman has given thousands of State Government employees their marching orders and says many more will go as he tries to cut costs and stop Queensland becoming "the Spain of Australian states".

Before the GFC Spain actually had low governmetn debt; private bank debt was the problem. Construction and spending on shiny new infrastructure was booming however. Does that remind you of the fiscal records of any former Lord Mayors?

Mr Newman if you were my son, I would have grounded you for bullying, deceitfulness and breaking people’s lives. You would be banned from playing politics for the rest of the year. Your state government has misrepresented the public service Ethics Act and code of conduct to promote the public good. I hope no one in my family needs medical treatment as the people responsible for accountability are gone, too busy to double check the surgeons qualifications or are developing an extra extended waiting list. I hope no one in my family needs a job as the training options for those who are not financially secure have been taken away and the Centrelink queues are getting longer. I hope I can continue to pay my rent as the housing advocacy groups have been decimated and I don’t want to be put on the housing list with the other 30,000 state wide households and join the every increasing homeless statistics.

When tightening the family budget or crises the first response is how to increase the weekly income and access the public/community sector for help. The next is too find more employment or have a garage sale to increase income and then cut back or adjust expenses associated with luxuries, such as alcohol, cigarettes, and recreation/sport. Every family knows you don’t mess around with the critical expenses for the family’s housing, medical, education and daily living needs, and/or anything that would suggest neglect and Child Safety knocking on your door.

For the State LNP dominated government to have only used one tool in the shed has decimated the public sector and state funded community services. To have deliberately provided comments that are half truths and contextually misleading one could only fathom what this budget on September 11 will bring to develop or destroy your four pillar economy. The irony is overwhelming, well done.

The numerous publications and the Commission of Audit Interim Report have clearly identified an ideologically driven campaign to indoctrinate the state’s influential constituents that would in turn parrot your slogans to believe we need to get Queensland back on track by letting a majority stacked LNP Campbell Newman Government make all the hard decision without contention, blame the previous labour government for everything. Subsequently, complying with biased evidenced driven slogans that those still employed need to work harder and not rely on public and community services for anything and the thousands of marginalised people in the state can continue to go without. To use a flawed and biased evidenced based driven political campaign to influence the state and fraudulently amend State policy is reminiscent of the entrenched international eugenics movement during 1930s and 1940s to dictate and justify cruel atrocities, which are now being committed in Queensland and will be truly felt come September 11 2012.

Mr Newman people are complaining, you’re just not listening or placing yourself where people are hurting. Offcourse people suffering where not at the EKKA, or anywhere else you have been hiding. This so called party has been a wake, as people are still trying to gain employment after they and their employers lost everything last year and they are not able to afford training to be up skilled or let alone pay the every increasing daily living expenses. They are still waiting for those small businesses to resurface and provide work for the every increasing queue at Centrelink. The ongoing significant financial hardship at the home front results in a heavy reliance on the state’s public services and grants funded programs that continue to be reduced/closed through the states budget cuts. This current State Newman Government’s ideologies to be performance based and have a crises driven social response instead of a risk-lead preventive approach to reduce the long term strain on health, employment and housing is fruitless. The contradictory statements by Newman and Nicholls that they will increase the public sector just after they have mutilated speaks for itself. The critical assessments of the LNP publications highlight the true ideological nature of the LNP political game to deceive the public to achieve self serving gains. The acknowledgment that the Bligh government expended money into asset based infrastructure and commission inquiries to address deficits in public service delivery has no bearing in the economic crises rather an investment in long term gain. However, if history speaks for itself the previous Mayor expended exorbitant amount of monies on under-used tunnels, bridges and bikes. Mr Newman’s action plan to grow a four pillar economy with a strong focus on the mining and racing industries is a real gamble. The real question is who stands to gain and who will the LNP go after next after it’s done with the public sector.

I understand you are busy at present but, given the job cuts, and the fact State debt was used as the excuse for an obviously ideology based decision, a post on State debt would be interesting. I’d love to see Qld gross and net State debt compared with other States and even countries, especially Spain. I think we all know what the answer will show.

Given the draconian nature of the cuts, it would even be interesting to compare the debt as % of GSP to say Victoria pre-Kennett, to put Newman’s actions into historical perspective. You are probably also aware of John Quiggins post pointing out that the whole problem could have been solved by raising land taxes to match interstate levels.

In 2012 Campbell Newman inherited a $64 billion gross Qld State debt (according to the Costello Audit, which is disputed). This ignores $70 billion of State savings but we will accept the Costello figures for now. The Queensland GSP in 2011 was $241 billion so Qld gross State debt is 27% of GSP. (Spanish debt is $1 trillion or 75% of GDP). Debt repayments (capital plus interst) for Qld in 2011/12 was $3.5 billion, or 8% of the budget. Qld net State debt is zero because of its $70 billion in investments.

Put simply, Queensland’s budget debt was only about half as bad as the Victorian situation pre-Kennett (or 1/3 as bad as Spain’s), and the budget was going to go back into surplus naturally by 2015 as revenues recovered after the floods. Qld debt is not even as bad as some other States, which you can see from the chart on page 31 of Costello’s “Audit”.http://www.commissionofaudit.qld.gov.au/reports/interim-report.pdf

statement (i have no party preference).
this may or may not have anything to do with this article (wasnt intended to if it does) i find the stories on crikey to be extremely pro labour gov (which doesnt surprise me because probably none of you have actually worked for yourself), why cant an entity just report the news without the self serving points of view. gay rights – so same sex couples want the same bit of 16th century legitamitisation (who cares) – thousands of people get sacked from public service departments that were grossly overstaffed and bludged upon (im going to retire young get a public service job).
you should be concentrating on real stories like both sides of government are working us to the point of full globalization at which point the single voice will mean nothing (think of how hard it is to talk to telstra to resolve something now (and this is supposedly an aussie company), imagine ten years time when a complaint has to be made and the corporate stance has been strengthened they will just hang up on you , bill you, and then send the bill to another company to collect.
crikey this is the first time i have read anything on your site and the last for at least a year, independant but not egotistical and self fulfilling, grow some balls

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...] The introduction to part 3 of the costing document emphasises public service growth without talking about any of the reasons for it. Possum Comitatus has a good piece on the increase in public sector workers, on Crikey. [...

...] because they can. When they want to cut expenditure (rightly or wrongly), their own employees are the easiest target. They tell the electorate that of course they are not cutting the front line staff who deliver [...

...] because they can. When they want to cut expenditure (rightly or wrongly), their own employees are the easiest target. They tell the electorate that, of course, they are not cutting the front line staff who deliver [...

...] because they can. When they want to cut expenditure (rightly or wrongly), their own employees are the easiest target. They tell the electorate that, of course, they are not cutting the front line staff who deliver [...

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Pollytics.com is a ride through the observable reality of politics, polling and media commentary. Driven by data, infected by snark and generally containing far too many charts - it comes to you from sunny climes north of the Rio Tweed and is the work of a single blogger, Scott Steel. For more, including my politics, click through or to contact him, click here